jQ.Mobi: At last, jQuery rewritten, ground-Up for iOS and Android

New community project is optimized for HTML5 mobile, provides stellar performance in a tiny footprint

Press release

January 16th 2012 jQ.Mobi, a new open source mobile development framework makes its public debut today. jQ.Mobi is a mobile-optimized, HTML5 rewrite of the ubiquitous jQuery framework which is used on over 50 per cent of all desktop websites. jQ.Mobi provides stunning speed improvement (2.5X faster than desktop jQuery), size reduction (only 3K vs. 36K) and code efficiency, with a particular focus on delivering an identically high quality user experience to both iOS and Android devices. Mobile developers can join the community and download the code here. JavaScript frameworks like jQ.Mobi provide common user interface and programming functions, reducing development effort and time. jQ.Mobi includes a query selector engine, a user interface (UI) library, and a collection of plugins.

On mobile devices, existing JavaScript UI frameworks like jQuery Mobile, JQTouch and Sencha Touch are all hampered by their roots in desktop Web browsers and HTML 4.

Under these legacy UI frameworks, the user experience on Android-based smartphones is particularly poor. Android devices now represent nearly 50 per cent of the world smartphone market.

“It’s great to finally see a lightweight JS library specifically tailored for smartphone performance and inspired by the popular APIs that made jQuery famous,” said Paul Bakaus, Zynga Germany CTO and creator of jQuery UI. “To me, this is the hopeful prediction of the future of jQuery 2.0, today.”

jQ.Mobi was contributed to the open mobile Web community by the developers at appMobi. “With jQ.Mobi we’ve given the mobile development world an HTML5-ready jQuery,” said Sam Abadir, appMobi CTO and founder. “The truth is, the single biggest issue facing mobile HTML5 developers is the lack of good user interfaces. There is nothing more critical to the success of mobile HTML5 in general. Apple set the bar high with its Cocoa Touch mobile interface and until now, similar quality UX tools haven’t existed for Web-based mobile developers, and that is why we’ve put this project into play. We’ve started this project with high expectations, focused around delivering speed, size advantages, and cross platform uniformity, and we look forward to seeing where the open source development community takes it from here.”

Speed

jQ.Mobi outperforms jQuery by 3X on Android and 2.2X on iOs. The JSPERF.COM test suite enables comparison of raw engine performance by testing the three most common functions: single query selector, create element and append element.

Tests were performed on various Android and iOS versions revealing that jQ.Mobi outperforms jQuery by 292 per cent on Android and 223 per cent on iOS. Improvement over Zepto was 5.5X on Android and 4X on iOs. Complete details of the tests and results can be viewed at jQ.Mobi, a new open source mobile development framework makes its public debut today. jQ.Mobi is a mobile-optimized, HTML5 rewrite of the ubiquitous jQuery framework which is used on over 50 per cent of all desktop websites. jQ.Mobi provides stunning speed improvement (2.5X faster than desktop jQuery), size reduction (only 3K vs. 36K) and code efficiency, with a particular focus on delivering an identically high quality user experience to both iOS and Android devices. Mobile developers can join the community and download the code here.

Size

The jQ.Mobi engine weighs only 3741 bytes, just 1/10th of jQuery, and less than half of Zepto. Code size is important for user interactivity in mobile because heavier pages take longer to load and to initialize. The full jQ.Mobi library with UI code is also tiny, at just 15K gZipped. By comparison, jQuery Mobile is 62K, and Sencha Touch weighs in at 99K.

Cross Platform Uniformity

jQ.Mobi was designed and tested specifically to provide identical experiences to users on both dominant smartphone platforms. Android has been a particular point of failure for desktop frameworks. A short video contrasting common UI functions on both platforms using each of the frameworks is available here.

jQ.Mobi is offered free of charge as an open source asset under the MIT X11 license, starting with a short private beta testing period which begins today. appMobi encourages interested developers to stay up to date with jQ.Mobi development by joining the email list at www.jqmobi.com. The development of jQ.Mobi and maintenance of the JQMOBI.COM site are sponsored by appMobi.

About appMobi

A bold proponent of the open Web, appMobi’s development tools and cloud-based services build on HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, creating a unified, open ecosystem that competes favorably with “walled gardens” offered by Apple and Google. In 2011, the company released several of its core technologies as open source, including its cross platform mobile device API, mobiUs Web browser, and directCanvas HTML5 game acceleration. In December, appMobi was named “Most Promising Tech Company for 2012” by ReadWriteWeb. appMobi’s technology allows mobile app developers to support HTML5 and native app platforms with just one code base, and to deploy and service their apps on multiple platforms, including the open Web. For more information visit here.

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